I am a faculty member in Information Science and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell, where I lead the Culturally Embedded Computing group.
Interests
I am a computer scientist and a cultural theorist. I develop culturally embedded systems; i.e., new kinds of interactive technology that respond to and encourage critical reflection on the place of technology in culture. I use insights from cultural analysis of IT to identify and rethink the assumptions underlying technologies, to build new applications for computing, including systems to support personal reflection on emotional and social experiences, and to develop new techniques for designing systems, including the use of self-experiment in design and new forms of evaluation for open-ended systems. My current research focuses on two core themes: (1) working towards sustainable IT design, with awareness of the central role that computing and other technologies play in consumer culture; (2) understanding the difference it makes in IT design to take the humanities and arts as central to our forms of knowledge production, in addition to science and engineering.
History
Previously, I worked at the Media Arts Research Studies group at the German National Computer Science Research Center (GMD) in Bonn, Germany and was a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany. In August 1998, I graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a self-defined interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Theory (administered jointly by the Department of Computer Science and the Program in Literary and Cultural Theory).